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Lord's Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.

Prayer for the Morning

Dear Lord, thank you for this beautiful day. Look after me and protect me throughout the day. Give me the wisdom to see and experience Your world in all its beauty. Let me experience the wonder of your creation.

Protect my family and those closest to me. Let me share with the world today, learning, growing, and contributing, and make the world a better place for all who know me, and for those who don't.

Penitential Prayer

O  blessed Christ, my teacher, my savior, my God: You have commanded me to love others as myself. Yet it is so easy to find the faults in others, for I see their outside and compare it against what is inside me. I have inflated my goodness and importance in my own mind, but have judged others for the smallest shortcoming, and I am filled by foolish pride.

I vow by this prayer that I will strive to follow your Word, to forgive all who have injured me, to turn loose the petty resentments and grudges that poison the world with hatred, and to overlook the faults of others; and I ask to be pardoned wherever I have done injury to my brothers and sisters, who are your beloved children even though they, like me, are sinners. And I vow, when I fall short of your commandment, to seek out and confess my wrongdoing. Forgive me, Holy Christ, and help me to ever amend my life; this I pray, with faith in the grace you have promised to the penitent sinner.

Meditation

[The hands of Christ are swift to welcome.]

Prayer of Resolve

I  bind myself to you this day, oh Christ, in your truth and in your sacrifice. I give to you my anxiety and my fear, my depression and my doubt, for you have promised to take them if we only ask; and I take upon myself your burden, for it is light and your way is gentle. May I keep this in my heart and mind all this day.

Think of the day ahead in terms of God with you, and visualize health, strength, guidance, purity, calm confidence, and victory as the gifts of His presence.

Entry into Jerusalem by Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, ca. 1842. (Full-size)

Isaiah 40:8 (ESV)

Hebrews 13:8-9 (ESV)

The Constant in a Changing World

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them.

Notes on the Scripture

When you are young, what is fresh and new seems like such a great thing. But then slowly, as you get along in life, you notice that things just change. They don't always change because they are better, or involve a new technology - they just change. When I was a young teenager, all the girls wore shoes that are now called “ballet flats”. They went out of fashion in the 1960s. Then, around 2010 -- almost 50 years later -- the exact same shoes suddenly became popular again! The Soviet Union is now once again Russia and no longer our arch-enemy. A railroad bridge in New York City has been turned into a park. Physics professors who once assured us that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line — it is science, it is factual! — have now changed their mind.

But Christ does not change. He is the single most absolute factor in the human universe.

e never changes His character. He is entirely good. Voltaire said, “In a hundred years, the name of Christ will be forever forgotten.” But the building in which he wrote those words is now a Bible warehouse. And if you ask someone in the street who Voltaire was, and who Jesus was, which one are they more likely to have heard of? His critics die and slip into the shadows, but His name lives on without diminishing, the perfect example of goodness.

His love never changes. He laid down His life for us, the greatest love any man can have (John 15:13), and he lays his life down again and again, every day, in the hearts and minds and souls of millions of people. It is not a love for a person, but a universal love for all of humanity, the very same people who mocked Him and spat upon Him, who slapped His face and beat Him bloody. And yet, He died “not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:2)

His power never changes. He is the Son of God, immortal and all-powerful, who alone has the ability to save our souls from death. His power to redeem us, to justify us before God and bring us into eternal life, is exactly the same in 2015 as it was in 1015. Men kneel before a cross representing His sacrifice to save us, in tears and humility, and will continue to do so until the end of the world.

His faithfulness never changes. There is nothing that can separate us from Him; He has not changed His mind and He is not going to. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

And finally, His purpose never changes. He came to earth, humbling himself to be born of a human woman, for one reason only: to teach us, to suffer and die, and to defeat the death we inflicted upon Him, in order that He might show us the path to God and live forever. His purpose continued even after He died, for we received His spirit that will be with us until the Final Day. Mountains may tumble, Gibralter may crumble, governments and science change: but Christ's total commitment to our salvation is an absolute rock that we can count on. No matter what might happen, to us or the world around us, there is one thing we can absolutely count on: Jesus Christ the Righteous, our Savior.

Daily Inspiration

“The Conquering Christian”

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